Bloomberg and NYPD sued for spying on Muslims

A lawsuit filed against the NYPD accuses the city’s police of regularly violating the civil rights of Muslims. The suit claims that the NYPD unconstitutionally profiles and intimidates them, thereby discouraging them from practicing their religion.

Civil rights lawyers filed the lawsuit in a federal Manhattan
court on Tuesday. Shortly thereafter, supporters of
the suit formed a rally outside of the New York Police
Department’s headquarters to reinforce their complaints.

“Our mosque should be an open, religious, spiritual sanctuary,
but NYPD spying has turned it into a place of suspicion and
censorship,” Hamid Hassan Raza, an imam named as a plaintiff
in the case, said at the rally.

The lawsuit was filed by civil rights lawyers on behalf of
numerous religious and community leaders, mosques, and a
charitable organization that were victims of the NYPD’s
surveillance of Muslim New Yorkers. The lawsuit requests the
court to declare such spy initiatives unconstitutional and order
the destruction of records related to the program.

The suit is the third major legal action filed against the NYPD
for its surveillance of Muslims, since information about the spy
program was first revealed
in 2011. The document lists Mayor Michael Bloomberg, police
commissioner Raymond Kelly, and deputy commissioner of
intelligence David Cohen as defendants. Bloomberg has long
defended
the controversial spy program, claiming that it helps thwart
terrorist attacks. But victims of the surveillance believe the
NYPD has gone too far, prompting them to change their lifestyles
to avoid becoming a target.

“When a police department turns law-abiding people into
suspects because they go to a mosque and not a church or
synagogue, it violates our Constitution’s guarantees of equality
and religious freedom,” Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU
National Security Project, said in a press release announcing the
suit.

“No one questions that the NYPD has a job to do, but spying on
innocent New Yorkers because of their religion is a wrong and
ineffective way to do it,” Shamsi added.

The suit describes the fears held by Muslims like Raza, who works
as a spiritual leader of Brooklyn’s Al-Ansar mosque. Afraid that
he would be misquoted or that his sermons would be taken out of
context and scrutinized by the NYPD, Raza has been recording them
for years. He avoids bringing up controversial topics and has
witnessed a lagging attendance at mosques, due to the Muslim
Surveillance Program.

“I don’t talk to my congregants about current affairs or
religious subjects the NYPD may find objectionable because I’m
afraid of further police attention,” Raza said. “The
surveillance program has prevented me from fulfilling my duty as
an imam. I cannot believe this has happened in the country that I
know and love.”

The lawsuit accuses New York City of violating the First and
Fourteenth Amendments. It was filed at a time when the National
Security Agency is under scrutiny for its extensive domestic spy
tactics first revealed by contractor Edward Snowden.

From the federal government to Big Apple’s police force,
widespread domestic surveillance initiatives have left some
Americans terrified, particularly Muslims whose daily activities
are being secretly monitored by the NYPD.